WTBA World Championships Day 1

Day 1 – Singles

There will be two patterns used in this year’s World Championships. The 33-foot Sydney pattern and the 39-foot Seoul pattern. The singles portion of the competition took place Monday on the shortest of the WTBA patterns, Sydney.

One of the biggest concerns we as bowlers deal with is not just the pattern but the topography. Luckily, the folks at Kegel now have the technology to give us a read out on how “flat” the lanes really are. This tool is a huge help to making adjustments on the fly.

Attached is the topography read out for Sunset Station provided by Kegel. LaneMapGuide_SunsetStation_LasVegasNV (3.4MB)

My cross yesterday was 36-46-56-12-22-32. By reading the graph it was clear there were going to be some trouble lanes and trust me, it does not make it any easier when you know its coming.

My day did not go quite as planned. I found something games 2 & 3 on the gutter and had back-to-back 230 games. But when I had to change ends it was all downhill. I missed some moves and made some bad decisions. Fortunately for me there are 5 more opportunities for medals at this year’s championships and I fully expect to learn from my mistakes.

On a brighter note, Team USA did take home its first of hopefully many golds. Bill O’Neill dominated the event leading qualifying and winning his two roll-off matches to secure the gold medal.  You can check out all the details and follow along at Bowl.com

Tuesday the men have the day off and the women take the lanes for their singles competition.